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If you’ve ever seen a Formula 1 team arrive at track and begin to unpack their trucks full of cargo, you’ll have likely watched in amazement at the speed and strength on display as they unpack everything that is needed for the weekend’s racing.

In addition to the car itself, around nine 40-foot containers are unpacked by the crew over a gruelling 24-hour period and their contents are used to set up the garage, the Paddock Performance Centre, Paddock Club, and our hospitality units, to name just a few critical areas.

We’re always working to reduce our freight and we’ll only ever take exactly what is required, no more and no less, but it still equates to a sizeable amount. Across the grid, logistics equate to approximately 45% of Formula 1’s baseline carbon footprint, while at McLaren, 10% of our footprint comes from air, road, rail, or sea freight transportation. So, finding a way to execute the transportation of our cargo more sustainably is at the very top of our agenda.

Reducing the emissions of our logistics makes up a key part of the Net Zero pillar of our sustainability strategy and we can achieve this by reducing both the amount of freight that we send, but also by changing the transport methods that we use, to accommodate lower-carbon energy and fuels.

At the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix, we achieved an F1 first with a demonstration of how more sustainable freight logistics is possible.  

With the help of our Official Logistics Partner DP World, we used a combination of rail, biofuel trucks, and electric trucks – an F1 first in itself - to transport our freight from the United States Grand Prix in Austin to Las Vegas.

From a purely statistical standpoint, the numbers alone are impressive. When compared to the diesel trucks that we would normally use, the trucks using biofuels achieved a 75% reduction in GHG emissions and those using electricity achieved up to 50% less energy – they also have no tailpipe emissions.

But it’s the potential long-term impact of this journey that should serve as the headline act.

Head of, Sea Freight & Infrastructure, Mark Baker has been at McLaren for more than 23 years and in that time, he’s seen all manner of innovations, from the F-Duct to our natural fibre composite seat, and he’s now been charged with leading his own.

Pulling together a project of this scale required a mammoth effort from Mark and his team. “First of all, the supply chain had to be sourced,” Mark explains. Thankfully, America is somewhat easier in this regard when compared to other countries we race in, but it wasn’t without its challenges.

Working with DP World, we identified a multi-modal transportation route that enables us to have a more environmentally friendly approach. For example, shifting from road to rail or sea for long-haul transport can significantly reduce carbon emissions compared to using trucks for the entire journey.

“Sustainable fuels were actually quite hard to source in Texas but we were able to facilitate the movement of normal road trucks using sustainable fuels to the train terminal,” Mark continues.

From here, a diesel-electric train was used to transport the freight to Los Angeles, where the team were met with another blocker. “The journey from LA to Vegas was too far for the electric trucks, so we had to look into what the smartest split would be between a biodiesel truck and an electric one.”

Due to the range limitations of today’s electric trucks, it made more sense to use the biodiesel truck to get us to the outskirts of Las Vegas, before using the electric trucks – which are charged using a biofuel generator - to deliver us to the racetrack and back again afterwards.

“Formula 1 is about trying and testing and bringing developments forward,” Mark says. “Logistics is not exempt from this. Unless you try and test and push the boundaries, you’re never going to know what is possible, but this comes with a risk.

“F1 is a competition and other teams have had their own achievements and showcased things themselves, but nobody achieved the level of sustainability that we demonstrated in Las Vegas. To put that on the table and say, ‘this is possible’, is a great thing”

The numbers prove that there were significant short-term positives that came from this project but its impact on our long-term ambitions was of greater magnitude: it was about taking these risks and proving the possibilities to the wider racing community. This was meant to be a glimpse into the future of F1 logistics, showcasing how it could look in the future, whilst highlighting any issues and blockers.

"There is the question of how amenable biofuels are around the globe,” Mark says. “In some of the countries we visit, they’re pretty much non-existent. Weather is also a key factor. When you get high winds and other extreme weather conditions, ports close.

“If that happens, then you’ve got to work out how to overcome that – the impact could require you to speed things up by five or even 10 days, because it may mean that you have to come back to the UK and effectively start again, but with the same amount of resource. What you can’t ever do is impact setup, so you have to plan for this possibility in your time allowance. Ultimately, you cannot predict everything, so you’ve got to give yourself the margins to compensate.

“It's the learning triangle of read, write, and experience. We've experienced it now and, hopefully, that demonstrates the achievability, giving us a better platform to work from globally.”

As well as on our way to Las Vegas, we travelled via rail freight from Miami to Canada in 2022 and 2023 and from Canada to Texas in 2023. We were also able to use the same kits at both the 2023 Bahrain and Saudi Arabian grands prix, which enabled us to minimise our regional movement.

So, this wasn’t our first venture into more sustainable travel, but it was the most challenging we’ve embarked on to date due to the multiple types of travel required.

“The demonstration in Las Vegas opened our eyes as to what is possible,” Mark continues. “Having that confidence now enables us to reach out to people in other regions and ask how we can do the same thing for their races. It’s about talking to locals and understanding what's possible in the region.”

None of this would have been possible without the help of DP World. Mark and his team have a working group set up with DP World, and they meet every week to work through projects such as this one as well as other day-to-day logistics. One of the benefits of partnering with a logistics provider of this scale is that when required routes don’t exist, we can co-create them. Working with DP World means we have the shared expertise and infrastructure to define new and better paths to track.

“People always think we are going 100mph and trying to get from A to B as quickly as possible, but in a lot of cases, we are actually trying to slow things down. One, to save emissions, and two to reduce our storage costs, and DP World partner with us on that.” 

Talks are ongoing between Mark, his team and DP World as they look at how we can improve the sustainability of our travel for 2024, with discussions first beginning when the calendar was released in July 2023 and evolving throughout the year.

“The calendar for this upcoming season is quite forgiving, but the timelines are still tight,” Mark says. “We have some plans already in place, but we have to be open-minded, and we have to constantly search for even better solutions.

“The flexibility of this team is enormous and the understanding is great. We’ve got a very similar mindset – we’re proud to take this forward and to push the boundaries and we are grateful for the support from everyone else in the business. I am extremely proud of where are right now.”